The Supreme Court's Group Hug

After years of split decisions, America's highest court has found consensus on a range of issues. How John Roberts brought the Justices together

Brooks Kraft / Corbis for TIME

Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States

The biggest surprise from the Supreme Court term that just ended: Barack Obama hearts the Roberts Court. At the end of June, the Democratic candidate praised Justice Antonin Scalia's 5-4 decision striking down the Washington ban on handgun possession, a ruling that recognizes the right to bear arms as an individual right. Two weeks earlier, from the other side of the ideological spectrum, Obama praised Justice Anthony Kennedy's 5-4 decision allowing enemy combatants to challenge their detentions in federal courts, a rebuke to the Bush Administration's policies toward Guantánamo detainees. Obama's only major quarrel with the court was the 5-4 decision...

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